Just who is the mystery gobbler of flash upstart GridIron?

GridIron Systems, a SAN accelerating startup, has been bought by a mystery buyer for an unknown amount.

The company builds the TurboCharger, a DRAM and flash cache box with software to automatically move the most-wanted data from the backing SAN into its cache store. GridIron's TurboCharger is also bundled with NetApp's E-Series E5400 arrays.

NetApp may want a similar supply deal for its fabric-attached storage arrays using its acquired CacheIQ technology as part of its storage clustering MARS project.

GridIron's Prasad Pammidimukkala, veep for product management and business development, was asked about the acquisition of GridIron and replied: "I will get back to you shortly - I can't comment at the moment." That's not a "no comment", then.

The likelihood is that GridIron has been swallowed by a mainstream storage vendor looking to compete with all-flash and hybrid flash-hard disk drive SAN arrays. That would mean the list of possible buyers could include Dell, EMC, HDS, HP and NetApp. ®